with their stolen
pony herds.

You pass above the gloomy shadows of Blythe's Abyss and wind beneath a
great box-shaped formation of red sandstone set on a spindle rock and
balancing there in dizzy space like Mohammed's coffin; and then, at the
end of a mile-long jog along a natural terrace stretching itself midway
between Heaven and the other place, you come to the residence of Shorty,
the official hermit of the Grand Canon.

[Illustration: HE'D GARNER IN SOME FELLOWS THAT WASN'T SHEEPHERDERS]

Shorty is a little, gentle old man, with warped legs and mild blue eyes
and a set of whiskers of such indeterminate aspect that you cannot tell
at first look whether they are just coming out or just going back in. He
belongs--or did belong--to the vast vanishing race of old-time gold
prospectors. Halfway down the trail he does light housekeeping under an
accommodating flat ledge that pouts out over the pathway like a
snuffdipper's under lip. He has a hole in the rock for his chimney, a
breadth of weathered gray canvas for his door and an eighty-mile stretch
of the most marvelous panorama on earth for his front yard. He minds the
trail and watches out for the big boulders that sometimes fall in the
night; and, except in the tourist season, he leads a reasonably quiet
existence.

Alongside of Shorty, Robinson Crusoe was a tenement-dweller, and Jonah,
weekending in the whale, had a perfectly uproarious time; but Shorty
thrives on a solitude that is too vast for imagining. He would not trade
jobs with the most potted potentate alive--only sometimes in mid-summer
he feels the need of a change stealing over him, and then he goes afoot
out into the middle of Death Valley and spends a happy vacation of five
or six weeks with the Gila monsters and the heat. He takes Toby with
him.

Toby is a gentlemanly little woolly dog built close to the earth like a
carpet sweeper, with legs patterned crookedly--after the model of his
master's. Toby has one settled prejudice: he dislikes Indians. You have
only to whisper the word "Injun" and instantly Toby is off, scuttling
away to the highest point that is handy. From there he peers all round
looking for red invaders. Not finding any he comes slowly back, crushed
to the earth with disappointment. Nobody has ever been able to decide
what Toby would do with the Indians if he found them; but he and Shorty
are in perfect accord. They have been associated together ever since
Toby was a pup and Shorty